Photograph by Theodore Roosevelt 



A FALLEN GROTESQUE GIANT OF THE AFRICAN PLAIN 



Collected for jyitrposes of scientific study in America. — Few persons realize the great labor and expense 



inrolrcd in the construction of the life (jroups of Ing game animals to he seen in the 



American Museum at New York, and the National Museum at Washington 



The giraffe, in striking an enemy, uses not only the front feet but also the teeth of the lower jaw. Great 

 size (the bull may stand 16 feet tall) and bright chestnut-red color make a reticulated giraffe especially con- 

 spicuous on the dry open plains or among the sparse thorn scrub where it lives, but it never tries to hide. It 

 trusts to keen sight, wariness, and speed. I have seen it through the field glasses one mile off only to find it 

 gazing steadily at me ; and usually before the hunter, or its only other enemy, the lion, approaches to within three 

 hundred yards, the giraffe has started away at a speed a galloping horse can scarcely equal. It may be that 

 during drought the giraffe spends long periods on the dry plain far away from water. Investigation of the 

 problem would be of value to biology. We were interested to find that this rare species (Giraffa camelopardalis 

 reticulata) and the common giraffe, at the meeting of the two ranges, do not intergrade. The specimen shown 

 here where it fell (Northern Guaso Nyiro, British East Africa) can now be seen in a stately mount at Washington 



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